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Harper – an open-source alternative to Grammarly

(writewithharper.com)
645 points ReadCarlBarks | 3 comments | 20 Jun 25 19:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.415s | source
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tolerance ◴[21 Jun 25 03:52 UTC] No.44334333[source]▶
I would much rather check my writing against grammatical rules that are hard coded in an open source program—meaning that I can change them—than ones that I imagine would be subject to prompt fiddling or worse; implicitly hard coded in a tangle of training data that the LLM would draw from.

The Neovim configuration for the LSP looks neat: https://writewithharper.com/docs/integrations/neovim

The whole thing seems cool. Automattic should mention this on their homepage. Tools like this are the future of something.

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triknomeister ◴[21 Jun 25 07:24 UTC] No.44335438[source]▶
You would lose out on evolution of language.
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1. eadmund ◴[21 Jun 25 14:40 UTC] No.44337956[source]▶
If a language changes, there are only three possible options: either it becomes more expressive; or it becomes less expressive; or it remains as expressive as before.

Certainly we would never want our language to be less expressive. There’s no point to that.

And what would be the point of changing for the sake of change? Sure, we blop use the word ‘blop’ instead of the word ‘could’ without losing or gaining anything, but we’d incur the cost of changing books and schooling for … no gain.

Ah, but it’d be great to increase expressiveness, right? The thing is, as far as I am aware all human languages are about equal in terms of expressiveness. Changes don’t really move the needle.

So, what would the point of evolution be? If technology impedes it … fine.

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2. dragonwriter ◴[21 Jun 25 14:43 UTC] No.44337980[source]▶
> So, what would the point of evolution be?

Being equally as expressive overall but being more focussed where current needs are.

OTOH, I don't think anything is going to stop language from evolving in that way.

3. canjobear ◴[21 Jun 25 17:37 UTC] No.44339264[source]▶
The world that we need to be expressive about is changing.